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“Gentlemen, ladies,” she said, bowing slightly. Then: “Eudo.”

“You see?” Eudo demanded, of no one in particular. “She has no respect, no loyalty . . . ”

“Not for you, no.”

Stung, Eudo managed what looked like a legitimate blush; must’ve really fed well, to be able to pull that off.

“ . . . she . . . ” He began again, with slightly shakier momentum. “Surely you can see how she doesn’t think she owes—us—”

(me)

“—anything.”

(I LOVED you, Elder.)

But: No. I loved you. Once.

(Once.)

Elder gave Eudo what was meant to be a last direct glance, cool teal to milky blue. And replied—

“Eudo . . . you did me a disservice when we first met, as we both know, even if you’ll never be man enough to admit it.” Raising her voice, then, to drown out his automatic protestation: “But I’m reconciled to that, I truly am. I don’t even care enough to want to kill you over it anymore. So—do yourself a favor, monk—”

“—and don’t make her,” Ulrike chimed in.

Flynn: “Yeah, man.”

(What she said.)

Eudo paused, struck momentarily speechless, throat working like he still needed to gasp for air. Elder raised a brow at the spectacle, and asked the nearest Clave-member—she thought his name might be Eater Of Found Things, the one whose low forehead and facial scarring rumor branded him as a possible genuine Missing Link, turned mid-Ice Age by something still older, wiser and even more ruthless—

“I mean, Eudo didn’t tell you he just found out about this, did he? ’Cause I made sure to tell him first, the minute I got the idea.”

Old friends that we are, and all.

But: “Yes,” the gold-laden Yoruba matriarch seated across from the Eater said, dryly. “So we read, in your memo.”

“What?” Eudo blurted.

“The memo I sent ’em, magistere. One ‘Rike got that hacker-grrrl she Biblically knows to mass-mail, under your sigil.”

“Whah . . . ” A cough, not-so-neatly slurring from one word to another in mid-syllable. “ . . . when?”

The Eater, in his creaky, ice-burnt voice: “Last week.”

Long before you called this meeting to order, or ran your mouth about how I was gonna bring down a new Inquisition on each and every one of us by doing something whose most likely only casualty—if and when any one of a three-page long list of predicted SNAFUs occurs—would be me, and me alone. Long before the Clave just sat there and let you act like you had ’em all in your figurative back pocket, let you presume to speak for a coven of vampires whose youngest member (aside from yourself) was either personally present when that Jewish prophet of yours had his moment of doubt and shame, or heard about it first-hand from somebody who was.

My memo. The one that begins: Since you all like history so much, let’s take the real long view. Imagine the Earth rendered uninhabitable even for us, probably in only a few more hundred years—a dead body marking off millennia, waiting to be engulfed by the sun when it goes nova. Vampires with no alternate food-sources, forced to turn on each other; a Dark Age longer than all previous Dark Ages put together, with chaos and boredom reigning supreme, and the Red Death holding sway over all.

(Unless.)

Unless, unless, unless.

Because: I can offer them what you would never think to, magistere; tempt them with an easy way out, lie to them with the truth. I can buy their approval by tempting them with a reason—however improbable—

—to hope.

Elder risked yet another next-to-”last” peek at Eudo, who seemed caught between synapses—realizing, slowly but surely, how completely the tide of opinion had finally turned against him. He shook himself, half-pivoting her way; she showed him her back, decisively: Just another open insult in a long, long line of the same, nights without end, amen . . .